


we play dumb but we know exactly what we're doing

by owlvsdove



Series: soft shock [7]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Academy Era, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 13:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2548589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlvsdove/pseuds/owlvsdove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Fitz's turn to take care of Jemma.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we play dumb but we know exactly what we're doing

 

She hasn't gone over to Fitz's yet today, which he probably finds strange. Not that she's permanently affixed to his side, not that she feels the need to be. But it's a Thursday night, which is usually when she goes around to his to see if he wants to kick off the weekend with a pint or if they should go back to the lab to finish their latest project or if he wants to watch like all of Sabrina the Teenage Witch in one sitting.

Things have gotten back into a routine. Sort of.  Yes, things have been different since Christmas, the funeral, New Year’s. The playfulness of their little _thing_ isn’t _gone_ , just overshadowed by a great and unbearable tenderness.

It's her own fault, too. Something peculiar in the air of a house party in Glasgow when the year's about to end. She was feeling something she was unwilling to identify, and she pushed too hard, and they ended up somewhere new.

She can't stop thinking about it. Mostly because when he looks at her now she knows he's thinking about it.

And that hurts, in a strange way.

But that's not why she hasn't gone to find him.

Today, he's going to have to find her.

She's fine, she knows she's fine. It's gotten this bad once before. Usually she's on top of it, Advil on a rigid schedule, eating well, working out. But the last time it hurt this bad, she was miserable and bedridden for three days.

She's been laying here for hours trying to breathe through it.

_Everything okay?_

She texts him back: _Come here._

Thankfully, he lets himself in.

“What's wrong?”

She doesn't know what to say. She hasn't sat up to face him; she's just trying to breathe.

“Nothing,” she says finally. “I just have really bad cramps.”

He comes into view above her. He doesn't actually look that worried. Or panicked. Or grossed out.

Actually, he looks kind of...pleased.

“ _What_ are you so happy about?”

“I'm going to take care of you.”

She frowns. “No, you're not.”

“Yes, I am! It's a balance, Simmons!”

“What?”

He kneels by the bed. “Do you need pads? Tampons? They have this cup thing—”

“ _What_?”

“It's a cup that—”

“Stop. Stop. Hold on, why do you know all of this?”

“I did research.”

“When?”

He gives her a long look.

“Oh.”

She pauses. Oh.

“Wait, you did research about menstruation for that? Why, exactly?”

“I don't know!” he says. “You know how I get when I start looking into a project I care about!”

 _Don't think stop thinking don't think_ —

“My vagina is not one of your projects.”

“I'm well aware!” he backtracks. “You know what I meant.”

She sighs. “Usually my period is fine. I happen to be _very_ regular.”

“Oh, I'm sure,” he mocks.

If she had the energy, she'd shove him. “But occasionally my cramps are really horrible and I can't really move without a lot of pain.”

“Did you take something?”

“Yeah, but it's not really doing much.”

“Have you been drinking water?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want a banana?”

“ _No_.” That sounded really whiny, but she honestly can't care.

“What do you want then? Anything you want, I'll do it. Within federal laws. …Just kidding. I don't care about America.”

Her eyes well up with tears. Fuck.

“The American prison system is horrible,” she says weakly. “Please don't break any laws.”

“Would you visit me in jail?”

“No,” she lies. She really sounds like she's going to cry now.

He runs a finger up and down her arm softly, probably afraid to jostle her around too much.

“Would you send me letters?”

She nods a little, biting her lip so it doesn’t tremble.

“Tell me the news. Let me know what happens on telly.” He laces his fingers with hers. “Send me cigarettes to trade for protection from—”

She breaks. “What are you even going to jail for?”

He shrugs, and they're silent for a long moment as Jemma tries not to sniffle loudly.

“What do you need?” he asks softly.

Oh, bloody hell. _Fucking fuck—_

She thrusts her arms out towards him wordlessly, dissolving. He looks a little startled, but he gets up from the side of the bed and kicks off his shoes. She grits her teeth as she shifts over to give him room and then suddenly he's under the covers with her again.

He's like a furnace. She's about to move closer, when:

“Wait, where's your roommate?”

She freezes. He's just shined a light on the central problem. If anyone saw them right now, they would feel embarrassed. They would panic and try to explain and they would come up empty.

They used to just ignore this problem.

Maybe they can't anymore.

“Gone to her boyfriend's,” she mumbles.

He looks like he wants to say something about that, but he doesn’t speak. He thumbs away the errant tears on her face.

God, she feels really strange. Well, outside of the pain and the perfectly reasonable influx of hormones. She feels so incredibly needy. She can't possibly get close enough to him. She wants him to swallow her whole; she wants to slice him open and crawl inside. It feels exactly that violent.

“How do you—?” he starts, but she's already moving towards him, planting her ear to his chest, so certain she won't move she'd bet on growing roots. She tucks her arms around him tight, and he does the same, like he's meant to. Their legs tangle.

“Will you pull the cover up?” she asks.

He pulls it up to her shoulders, but she shakes her head a little, so he pulls it up almost all the way over her head, leaving just a little room so she can see the light if she looks up, just a little room so she can breathe. To him, looking down, she must seem to be a mop of curls. A nest. Fine. Let her look like a wild thing. A lion resting on a gazelle. Let him be afraid of the inevitable bite.

Except he isn't. She knows he isn't.

She is.

“Please don't leave,” she mutters into his shirt, and she hates herself for it and immediately hopes he doesn't hear.

“Me? Leave?” Dammit. “ _You,_ don't leave.” He sounds very surprised.

“I can't.”

“Because I'm holding on?”

“Because my insides are tearing themselves up and evacuating my uterus.”

“Well. Yeah. Okay.” He breathes. “I'm not going to leave.”

She burrows tighter into him.

“Good,” she mouths. He definitely didn't hear that.

They stay quiet for a long, long time. He rubs his hands over her back steadily, not too hard, not too soft. Like somehow he's divined the perfect pressure to put on her.

Eventually, he speaks:

“Are you sure you don't want anything?” he says. “I could go to that bakery you like and get that sugar puff thing you cried into after that exam?”

She shakes her head.

“I could get you, um. Oh! I could get you new underwear. So you don't have to worry about mucking these ones up.”

She almost smiles. She shakes her head.

“Or, okay, _or,_ um, I could draw you a bath. ...I mean, we'd have to find a bathtub, but—”

She smiles. She shakes her head.

“Are you sure you don't want a banana?”

“I'm sure.”

He smells good. He smells like he does in his bed but a bit like he put on extra deodorant, just in case. Just in case—

“Thanks,” she says.

“Yeah, course.”

She shifts up a bit so their faces are more even together. She reaches up, kisses his neck, and his jaw, and the bit where the scruff of his hair stops before his ears, and she ignores the stab in her gut and reaches more, and she kisses the corner of his eye and his forehead and his eyelid closed in adoration, and the bridge of his nose and the tip of it, and every mirrored part gets a kiss too, and his lips and his lips and his lips.

She’s the lion. But it’s inevitable. She’s still going to feel the pain when she bites.

 


End file.
